I've been meaning to reach out and extend kudos to the ex--for weeks now.
This sounds mean, I know, but my intention is for the highest good I can manage, beyond him: he has been acting almost like a real human being for ...weeks? Maybe even months... No. Maybe months is pushing it somewhat. I'll have to stick w weeks, but at least he has been making some clear and obvious efforts, for which I am grateful. Better, the effort seem to be sticking. Not his usual change for a week or two and then go back to his business as usual thing...
Maybe he will become that person he swears he already is one of these days.
He seems to be trying to learn how to communicate...that is amazing.
He's actually been talking to me as if I am a real human being and not some garbage he has to scrape off his shoe (which, in his defense, sadly enough, is how he treated me from the get go)--and not just about comic books or movies or websites, but like, about our kid and everything. It's actually terrific--and I so so appreciate it! On so many levels...
Two? Three weeks before halloween, he agreed that E could spend the night (N was begging to 'keep her' so hard--it's so pitifully adorable when he does the 'please..can we keep her...please routine....) . My head spun over that for days afterwards. The man actually made plans--weeks in advance. This man who has so consistently been unable to commit to simple things (like can we go to the grocery store when you get back to the house this afternoon or how about lunch tomorrow), since we were dating, much less living together....agreed, weeks early, in advance. It still takes my breath away.
He's done something like that a couple times recently. The thing w Halloween, I wanted to kiss him (no, not like that)--it meant so much to E that he said yes...without his normal stalling or excuses or put offs. He definitely deserves a cookie -- or a chocolate ('big bang theory'--we love that show)--whatever. He deserves kudos. I am so proud of him and the progress he's making.
Another really big thing is he declined to allow N to receive the H1N1 vaccine. I was so very relieved over that. I had spent days working up email pleas in my head, knowing if I sent them he would be likely to march N out and get the shot that minute...in the end, I held my breath, prayed and let it go. In the end, he didn't do it--and I am so so happy he didn't.
Go ahead. Yell at me all you want about that.
Then go read the info on autism and how 1 out of 91 persons in the US is autistic these days. 1 out of every 91 persons.
Then read how China's autism rates sky-rocketed when they used the US vaccines for things like oh MMR--and how once they stopped using those vaccines autism rates plummeted--and then ask me, she who has stood there on foreign soil and watched how the US government told the US citizens back home one thing while doing another, if I believe the US reports about how nothing in the vaccines, mercury or otherwise, had anything to do w China's autism rates. My big purple baboon butt it didn't.
I was already anti-vaccine before the reports of China and autism came out.
I was already anti-US government as a source of honesty and truth way way way before that--you don't come from military backgrounds and buy everything the government says wholesale...
A hundred years from now, people will be better able to strain the truth from the lies, but none of that will help us now...
Oh, did you forget I am that hippy dippy off the grid love peace and pass the ammo type of gal?
Sorry to disarm you so.
I'm still here. My SO may be curbing my desires to do certain things, but he is not taking away the passions beneath. Trust me.
I have always had bad reactions to the flu vaccines. Always. Dead vaccine. Live vaccine. Partially killed vaccine. I won't let my kids have them. I get so much sicker from the vaccines than from the actual flu I am supposed to be protected against--and then on top of that, after recovering from the vaccine, I always got the flu, and reacted worse to it than to the flus I got when I didn't get the vaccine. I don't do vaccines unless I have to anymore--and I never ever do flu vaccines.
I have learned, the hard way, the damage I may have caused by allowing the ear infection vaccine stuff for both kids when they were little. My brother had such problems w his hearing due to infant ear infections. I have significant scarring in one ear from childhood ear infections. I thought a vaccine to prevent ear infections would be a good thing. Nope. Both kids have hearing problems...
And even as I did it, on the ex's prodding--since 'everyone' does it--that's his philosophy--I know the chicken pox vaccine for both kids is really going to haunt us at some point...
Enough of that tangent.
I am actually trying to be genuinely nice to the ex and tell him he's been an incredible and decent person lately.
Wish he had been this person all along. Ye gods, would things have been so much easier on everyone then...
He can be a good guy. Especially if he can open his mouth and talk.
What brought all this on today?
That 70s house. :-)
When we moved into this house (the Western Woods house, as we call her--yes, I name darn near everything) , our original intent had been to unpack, clean the place up, and then throw a house warming party. Except, well, there was the accident...and by the time I recovered enough from that (accident was Nov--semi-recovery was not til March, if not later, if you can even claim I am recovered at this point now) the house was showing its other colors and I had no desire to have anyone enter the house, much less a desire to entertain...
With that 70s house, I have ROOM...at first, I was thinking--I can buy furniture...I can do this....I can do that....
No. I don't want to.
Look. It's November. I try to do as little shopping as is humanly possible after the first week or two of November. Even when it comes to grocery shopping. I hate to add to any positive statistics about sales increasing during the 'holiday' season.
Number one: I don't want a lot of stuff to clutter up the new place. I may bow down and buy another couch, since our current one is going in the basement for the kids--because the basement is the play area and there will be a minimum of toys allowed in the bedrooms (only stuff to sleep w)--which is why I wanted a basement in the first place! (Not to mention, yarn stash, fabric stash.....)
Number two: I hate making anyone's numbers 'look good', as if me going shopping in Nov/Dec can save the world by increasing someone's sales or something.
I have certain things I have committed myself to buying...a set of bunk-beds...an electric fireplace (or stove)...and a decent dining room set (which is going to be interesting to find considering what I am looking for w that....)...and a queen sized mattress set since E is getting the canopy bed and I am going to use the bed my dad gave us...and that will mean queen sized sheets as well...
I will also need to buy some shelving units, good ones....and at least three more bookcases--but these last two things are things I was planning to buy anyway regardless if we moved or not....
That's it. Oh, no, it isn't. I want new glasses, drinking glasses. But that's not a big deal. It's not as if we can't manage w what we have.
With this house, I can throw all our stuff in it, arrange said stuff, have room and more room, which I have missed (funny, how now we are leaving, issues w this house that have bothered me all along that I have ignored are now really bothering and rankling me), yada yada yada, I will be able to throw that house warming party.
Here's where I've been trying to head with this, really.
I can invite the ex, his sister and her family, R and anyone else I can pry loose from their houses (I have hermit friends--we hermits have to stick together :-) ) --the thing is--R and T can be in the same house, in the same room even. They don't like each other. T and R have never gotten along. R and I have always been attached in one way or another, friends for 9 years now. T didn't like R long before I got pregnant w N. BUT, both men can be decent enough human beings to be in the same room together without making a scene. It's very important to E that her cousins come to the new house. And w this house, I won't feel like I'm crushing the girls into a small space w nothing for them to do. There will be room for A to stay over now. I still won't have cable or satellite tv. I still won't own a game system--although R and I have been discussing the educational games for E on the Wii....
I know I can invite both men over at the same time. It won't be a happy happy joy joy scene. They are never going to be hugging good friends or anything. But, it's not going to be horrid either. They won't speak to one another if they don't have to, but they will both be decent for the sake of the others, for the sake of the kids. I like that.
Not everyone can say similar things about their exs. I don't think the other ex would tolerate R's presence for a second if he were involved in any capacity. They worked together, when R and I weren't anything more than friends, and unless he had to or wanted something the ex never even spoke to R. And I know he was spoken to several times about his unprofessional behavior towards R over the years.
It's kinda sucky to say that of the ex's between R and me, T is the most mature and grown-up. He may not like R, but he won't cause a scene about things. It's a good thing to know. It's a good thing to have between all of us.
We are still taking bets about the conniption fit R's ex will have the first time she sees us together. I like my odds on that bet. The one that says she storms off and rants and raves at everyone else without a word to us. She thinks I am the one who ruined their relationship. Funny. By her own admission, the relationship was over well before I even considered moving back to this area. She just didn't break it off because nothing better had come along for her. I fail to see how her inability to communicate and her fear of commitment has anything to do with me. He was planning to buy her a ring--before I even thought of moving back--and she killed that idea real quick w her insane behavior--the whole ring idea, it was gone--before I ever considered moving back.
Let's not go off on a tangent there. She is just so fun to watch. She was always so uber concerned w what complete strangers thought about her. Now, she is showing her true colors, and showing her a** to the entire world, becoming the butt of so many jokes from her own 'friends' it is almost shameful to watch. So far, my odds on her are winning. If she weren't so bloody insipid, I might feel bad for her. That woman has some serious issues to deal with--that have nothing to do w me, or R, or anyone else but herself. Actions prove it all out, baby. This chick is proving out some very interesting things.
But--I do for her what I do for all my exs and for all the stupid people in my world--and it is an HONEST wish too, for my intentions are actually pure, as evil as that is, because I understand the breadth and width and depth of it:
I wish she gets everything she wants and thinks she deserves, for the rest of her life.
And with that. I will pat my own decent respectable trying to evolve and showing improvement ex on the back--because he is doing such a good job there, trying anyway....
Here's to a better future.
